A wild night with lots of surprises.
I went to the Wonderland club at 20 W 20th last Thursday night around midnight, and when I showed my Le Rouge Lounge invite on my phone to the bouncer outside, he radioed inside for Joe Lido himself to come get me. While this was happening, a second bouncer was scanning my drivers license.
Joe himself came outside to greet me and take me inside, and after confirming that the last time I'd been to one of his establishments was pre-COVID, he gave me a tour.
He showed me where the private rooms are (actual individual rooms with actual doors), and the regular (Wonderland) club, and then showed me the door to the "Lido" area.
My initial reaction was really mixed. I genuinely appreciated this hands-on approach by Joe; I'm affected by old-fashioned, face-to-face encounters and actual handshakes, and it made me feel welcome and appreciated as a customer. So there's that. But the back room, the "Lido" area, was truly tiny, compared to my experiences with the more pop-up version of the lapdance party experience. Joe introduced me to a handful of girls (Cecilia, Sage, Venus, Hunter and Julia) and I chatted with each of them very briefly while getting a drink. So there's a small area (14 x 14?) directly opposite the bar that is jam-packed with club chairs and a few low tables (so jam-packed it was actually hard to move through it), and then there was a screened-off area (maybe 12 x 14) just beyond that, with over a dozen club chairs for $20 dances.
At this point, I'm focusing more on the layout, and starting to get into a critical mindset about everything feeling cramped and small, but once I started talking to the girls, I remembered what I love about the Lido vibe: young, attractive and friendly girls who enjoy talking with guys. I was approached in a slightly un-Lido way by Hunter, a Californian who's quite tall, and decided to get a $20 dance with her. I called it a vibe-check, which made her laugh. By the end of one song, I realized I wasn't that comfortable with Hunter, either physically nor conversationally, so I told her I wanted to mix it up and she was cool. In returning to the rest of the girls, I realized that Julia was no longer there, and she's the one who had most naturally caught my attention. I found Venus to be a engaging conversationalist, though, and so we went for a $20 "vibe-check" after a bit. In Venus' case, although the conversation continued to be fun, I felt the physical comfort wasn't really there, and we parted ways. I went on a little prowl, back into the Wonderland club, to see if I could spot Julia, but I couldn't find her.
When I returned to the Lido area, a girl named Crystal had appeared. She explained that she works "both sides" (Lido & Wonderland), and it was clear that she had more of a stripper vibe than the girl-next-door Lido vibe. She appeared slightly intoxicated, and had a great bad-girl energy, so when she suggested a VIP private room for 30 minutes, I went for it. What followed was one of the most unusual VIP experiences I've had in a club. I realized that I'd failed to make any of my expectations clear ahead of time but had made my peace with that. I saw that my junk was probably not going to get any attention, at any price, but slowly realized that Crystal wanted to get off. I think you may have to trust me on this: it did not on any level seem like a gimmick of hers, or business as usual, or some way to appear hot to guys, but more connected to her possibly having had a little more to drink than she meant to have on a work night.
Before I knew it, I was servicing her with a multiple FIV adventure that had a hardness, a roughness to it that exceeded anything I've ever encountered with a girlfriend. She was insistent, grabbing my hand, changing positions, and I felt like we had definitely left the reality of strip club adventures and launched headlong into her very specific needs and kinks. It was delightful in its complete inversion of the usual dynamic, which would have a girl putting on some kind of performance (with lots of artifice) to try to drive a man crazy with desire. Here I was, a random guy chosen by a girl who really, really wanted to get off a bunch of times. So, not at all what I was thinking might happen, and yet hot nonetheless.
Afterwards I felt like I wanted a little return to normalcy, and I spotted Julia being wooed by a guy in Wonderland. Just to give you a picture: Pretty much all the girls (both sides) are in lingerie or some kind of bikini or stripper costume, but Julia is wearing a simple pink dress. The one hint of naughtiness is you could see the straps of her black bra alongside the straps of the dress. Julia is a beautiful blonde, early 20s, unenhanced, and a classic GND type. The guy she's listening to is all suited up and just talking her ear off. So I decide to stand nearby, see if I detect any "rescue me" looks from Julia (we'd chatted before on the Lido side), since this guy isn't spending any money on her, it's like he's just drowning her in stories about himself. But Julia has terrific manners, and she never shot me a look, never split her attention from this guy, even for a second. I know, I know, I sound like an idiot. But it gets better.
Finally Julia excuses herself to go to the ladies room. Both the ladies and the men's bathrooms have a little shared lobby area, and I realized that if I hovered by the payphone in that tiny little restroom lobby, I might be able to get Julia's attention on her way out of the ladies room. Sure enough, she comes out and I whisper "Julia!" and she comes over to where I am, out of sight of the talkative guy. I told her I'd been meaning to find her ever since I first arrived, and I was offering to rescue her from that guy. She was thrilled that A) I remembered her name, B) had been trying to find her, and C) was willing to get between her and the talkative guy. She showed me a secret way to get from the restroom mini-lobby directly into the Lido area, so we didn't even have to walk past the guy who was waiting for her.
The lapdance area on the Lido side was completely empty, so I just kept Julia in non-stop $20 lapdances so that we could continue talking and I could fondle and nuzzle her beautiful, natural breasts and enjoy having a somewhat more normal Lido experience. We finished with a chat at the Lido bar and eventually said good night.
One hiccup was Joe had a lot of curiosity about the private room time I had with Crystal -- not what went on in the room (!) but something about the money. He clarified that he wasn't worried about me and whether I'd paid, but I think that maybe one of the private room managers couldn't account for the cash I'd given him, or something. We had at least two different conversations about it. Joe seems like a decent guy, I hope he isn't getting ripped off by somebody.
Also, here's a tip from a guy with very few tips: I usually have two wads of money when I'm in a club. There's a kind of dummy wad (maybe $16, $17) and then the real wad for paying for private rooms and such. At some point in the evening somebody palmed my dummy wad, and I'm fairly certain I know who it was. I do that because if someone is moving fast and thinks they found my money, my assumption is they'll stop looking. It makes me feel like my actual wad is safer when I do that.
Over and out.